Wednesday, November 30, 2011

There’s little that can top a well-told story, especially if it is
your own story.

The five stories I heard last Sunday were in a class of their own.
They took me on long journeys across time, space and the recesses of the human
mind. They were deeply moving stories of determination, passion and hope.

Above all, they were personal stories told by women and men who have
fought the odds just to have the freedom to be themselves and chase their
dreams.

So there I was at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs near Trivandrum. Every year, the institute — which is a project
of Braille without Borders — runs a programme to mould visionaries and social
change makers. Those who attend the programme come from across the world, from
different backgrounds and with different physical capabilities. What unites
them though is the determination to climb every mountain in pursuit of their
dream.

Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg, the founders of the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs (IISE), believe that it is a ‘dream factory’
that creates leaders who will drive social change. So towards the very end of
each year’s training programme, every participant gets to make a ‘dream speech’
— a presentation on the social venture they plan to run after graduating.

This year, 16 change makers are graduating from the institute, and
their stories and dreams are as diverse as they are. There’s Marguerite, a
single mother who overcame low self-esteem, got herself a degree in her mid-30s,
turned around a business and, more recently, battled the loss of her eyesight. Phoenix-like,
she has risen from each adversity, and now intends to create a learning hub in
Baltimore to empower African American women.

Then there’s Marcus who saw his family’s fortunes turn to dust and
his many ‘friends’ disappear. So what did the ever-smiling Marcus do? He went
out and found himself a dream — to start a creative design-based programme to
help Nigeria’s marginalised youth build an identity for themselves.

Being partially sighted has worked to her advantage, says Tahreer
from Palestine. For it has enabled her to walk down paths that are open to very
few women from Hebron. And now, she wants to help other women find ways in
which they too can shape their lives. To begin with, she dreams of opening
Hebron’s first Internet café for women, which will also be a safe space for
Palestinian women to meet, learn and empower themselves.

Raja’s story is one of spunk; of not letting his physical challenges
get the better of him. It’s also a story of compassion for people who fall
through society’s cracks. While talking to prisoners in the Pondicherry jail as
part of his graduate research, Raja realised that their children often get a
very bad deal. So his new mission is to set up centres that will take care of
the young children of those who are incarcerated in India’s prisons.

And then there’s Nelson, who has seen death, torture and a million
other horrors brush past him during Liberia’s long civil war. Now that peace
has come, he wants to empower Liberia’s disadvantaged, especially those with
disabilities, through a community radio station.

Beyond the adversity, passion and grit that runs through these
stories is the tenet that hope endures. And that redemption is only a thought
away.

PS: All 15 ‘dream speeches’ are currently up here and will also be
available soon on the IISE website I understand.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

I’m still reeling from an encounter with Santhosh Pandit.
Fortunately, I’ve come away relatively unscathed since it was a virtual
encounter — he was giving an interview on television last night.

But the interview, supplemented by some of his videos on YouTube,
has left me almost speechless. Which, I’m told, is one of two customary
reactions to Pandit, Kerala’s newest cultural icon. The other response to
Pandit and his work, I gather, is to let loose a stream of invective broken by
bouts of hysterical laughter.

Who is this guy, I wondered when I saw him in action on television.
And the more I saw of him, the more intrigued I was. His web site and Google
threw up some answers, but his videos on YouTube were a revelation.

In a line, Pandit is a Malayalam filmmaker. And one who has donned
several hats in his recently released debut film Krishnanum Radhayum. A more
complex descriptor though, is that Pandit is a wave that’s sweeping across
Kerala.

From what I’ve heard, his film is so appalling that appalling
doesn’t quite cover it. And if the videos on YouTube are anything to go by,
execrable would be a very generous description of the film. His acting sucks,
his songs suck despite the double entendre, the dialogues suck — everything
about the film sucks.

Yet, people in Kerala are forking out money to see Krishnanum Radhayum.

A friend who sat through the two-and-a-half-hour film said it is so
bad that you want to commit hara-kiri. Audiences were either in splits or busy abusing Pandit in Malayalam, he added. Still, people continue to go for the
film and Santhosh Pandit is apparently one of the top searches on Google.

So what is it about this film and its creator that mesmerises? Is it
his self-deprecatory, permanently goofy expression and facial contortions? Is
it his ability to create an opportunity for us to vent? Do we identify with his
‘ordinary guy living out a fantasy’ story? Or have our standards fallen so much
that we, in some strange way, find him and his work entertaining?

The answer, I suspect, is a combination of all these. But it is also
something more complex, a reflection in some ways of the spirit of the times.

What intrigues me more, though, is what drives Pandit. Reading
between the lines of the interview I saw on television and a couple on YouTube,
it seems he knows just how awful his work is. So is he, through all the
clowning around, taking carefully aimed pot shots at the holier-than-thou
Malayalam film industry and cultural establishment? Or is he a canny
businessman, who has discovered a new path to fame and riches? Or is he just a
supremely confident chap living out his celluloid dreams?

I have no idea. What I do know though is that Santhosh Pandit is having
a blast with his 15 minutes of fame. Which is, I guess, a great way to live.

Back stories are always instructive. And sometimes entertaining. So
it is a delight to read one that is both instructive and entertaining.

For a behind the scenes look at what went into the stories in Desh, dancer/choreographer
Akram Khan’s new production, go here, here and here. These back stories, of a
sort, have been written by Karthika Nair, a poet, writer and dance producer.
Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, Karthika is a very good friend.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Understanding the logic that underpins infrastructure projects in
India is often a bit like trying to solve a puzzle. And in Kerala it is even
more so.

The City Road Improvement Project — better known by the rather inapt
acronym CRIP — in Trivandrum is one of those infrastructure projects that sometimes
befuddle. In theory, the project is intended to transform 42-odd kilometres of
Trivandrum’s roads into world-class thoroughfares. In practice, some road
surfaces have improved, but there have also been inexplicable screw-ups.

Consider the picture above. It is of a ‘bus bay’ about 100 metres
from a very busy junction on the city’s arterial MG Road. Bus bays are useful,
but the thinking that has gone into designing this one seems iffy.

As the picture shows, one bus has stopped outside the bay, almost in
the middle of the road, and the other has stopped ahead of the mouth of the
bay.

Over the course of a morning last week, I found that about 50 per
cent of the buses that went past stopped outside the bay. And in the process
blocked the road and created traffic snarls. This, I agree, is a problem of
enforcement — the police needs to ensure that every bus uses the bay. But this
is a route with a high volume of bus traffic and most buses stop at this point.
So if every bus that passes by uses the bay — that can accommodate about
two-and-a-half buses at a time — there would probably still be a traffic jam
during the peak hours. This implies that the bus bay is simply too small to
cater to peak hour traffic; which, to me, seems to be a design flaw.

Which brings me to the next inexplicable aspect of the bus bay’s
design. The entrance to the bay is about a foot or two away from the exit from
an important government office complex. As a result, every vehicle that comes
out of the office complex ends up blocking the mouth of the bus bay, at least
for a second or two, laying the ground for a series of micro traffic snarls
through the day as the picture above and the one below show.

Given the constraints of this stretch of road, this is perhaps the
only design possible for the bus bay. But that begs the question — Why have a
bus bay at all, especially if it creates more problems than it solves?

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Quality of life means different things to different people. A thread
that runs through this thought-provoking blog post by Viju Balanarayanan, a
former colleague.

The overarching theme of Viju’s post, though, is that cities like
Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi — and Kerala as a whole — are not very friendly
and safe places for women. In other words, Kerala may score high on the
‘liveability’ index based on parameters like water, sanitation, shelter and
literacy, but it sucks if you consider parameters such as the freedom that
women enjoy. As he writes:

“But if you are woman, you are at your own
risk if you venture out after twilight. If you are a single, widowed or
divorced woman staying alone, the city becomes a preying monster. Even without
your knowledge, stories begin to circulate (especially if you smoke and drink)
that you are ‘available.’”

While there are exceptions, much of what
Viju says is true. The levels of gender disparity in modern Kerala are stark;
as they are in many other parts of the country.

What puzzles me though is how often people
are surprised at the gender disparity that exists in Kerala. And this, perhaps,
has much to do with two decoys — Kerala’s high literacy and heritage of a
matrilineal society.

Yes, it is true that Kerala enjoys almost
100 per cent literacy. But literacy does not necessarily lead to greater gender
sensitivity and equality between the sexes.

And while some communities in Kerala, such
as the Nairs, were (and are) matrilineal, they never were matriarchal. And that
makes all the difference.

Traditionally, descent and inheritance in
these communities was through the women, but power was generally in the hands
of the eldest male — the karnavar — be it a brother or uncle. There may have
been some families with a matriarch or two, but this was probably the exception
rather than the rule.

So take away high literacy and perceptions
of a matriarchal society and Kerala becomes pretty much like any other part of
India. More educated, perhaps, and with better healthcare, but with many of the
gender inequalities that exist in other parts of the country. Consider, for
instance, the films and television serials that literate Kerala’s entertainment
machine now churns out. How many of them feature strong, independent female
characters, let alone strong, independent female characters in a lead role? And
the few strong-ish female characters that appear are mostly the ‘bad’ ones who
either meet a sorry end or see the ‘error’ of their ways. Yet, these films and
television serials are lapped up by Kerala’s literate audiences.

None of this, however, explains why it isn’t
possible to have a meaningful, equitable equation between women and men in
Kerala and elsewhere. Finding an answer to that might just help make Kerala a
truly liveable place for all people.